(Btw, I am a moderator of a.weirder.earth and this list mostly reflects our instance blocks, but there are a few differences for certain reasons.)

Content Warning

This post will reference some unpleasant stuff on all kinds of things ranging from hate speech to child porn. There are also some screenshots of fascist, violent or ignorant ideology or opinion, (but not porn or illegal content). If you're not feeling good to read or see that kind of stuff, then I recommend you stop reading.

Links that contain or may contain distressing imagery (gore, violence, etc.), NSFW or lolicon/CP are un-hyperlinked for your convenience, but unpleasant discourses, ignorant, violent or fascist opinions, etc. are not.

FAQ

Check out my Instance Blocking FAQ if you have objections to this practice or are unsure about the nature of it. It doesn't cover everything, but it might help.

Is there a mistake?

If you think there's been a mistake (that I blocked you for reasons which aren't the case), you can talk to me on @dzuk@a.weirder.earth if you're not on the other side of a domain block. If you are, you can talk to me on Telegram at @Dzuque or on Matrix at @vaporwave-orc:matrix.org.

I don't have the energy to debate about the reasons to block themselves, but I did make an FAQ that might answer some things for you.

This list mostly covers English-speaking instances.

I'm trying to kick my monolingual disease but until then, the instances on this list will be generally English-speaking instances. If you make a list for other languages let me know so I can link to yours from this page.

This list updates!

If you know of an instance similar to these that you want to add and want to forward the evidence to me, I'll be happy to take it at @dzuk@a.weirder.earth. This list will update as I find more.

Here is the list!

⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ Go go go ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

Harassment and/or directly shitty behaviour towards other instances

There seem to have been other instances on this list that also have engaged in harassment with other instances, but these are the only ones I could find the evidence for.

This instance's admin and founder decided to harass a non-binary person and got kicked off of their old instance, so they made this instead. (PS. If you're not tired of people labelling their shittiness as 'free speech' yet, you might be by the time you get to the end of this list.)

Fascist, violent speech and zero-moderation spaces

These are safe spaces for violent and/or shitty ideologies and speech - including fascist (such as Alt-Right, Identitarian[another link]), Neo-reactionary, GamerGate, and so on. They also tend to contain illustrated sexualised depictions of minors, untagged NSFW and more.

It's generally self-evident from looking at the homepages or descriptions so I didn't give specific evidence links, but if you want to check for yourself you will need to be careful as illustrated sexualised depictions of minors do exist on many of these. According to other sources, many of these places have also harassed people in other instances.

These are the kinds of instances where suspending would be pretty appropriate.

Less obvious fascist or violent speech spaces

They aren't as extreme or as obvious as the previous list, but they still totally have these streaks, so I'm going to give evidence links. I don't know if these instances contain lolicon other than the ones I specifically mention (community.highlandarrow.com probably doesn't), so you might want to be on the safe side with the media blocks.

Most of this is fine but there are the occasional crappy discourses, shown in the links below. Apparently this instance's software apparently does not have moderation tools either so they are literally incapable of moderating themselves to an extent.

You do not have to do anything about this one because it does not federate with Mastodon, but I'm adding this one to the list for the sake of completion and in case it ever stops doing so. You know, why not.

Unwilling to moderate hate speech and shitty content

Instances that aren't overtly fascist spaces or fascist safe spaces, but they do say that they want to moderate as little as possible, with the only thing they're really willing to moderate is what's illegal for them. That also usually includes harassment.

The problem with that is that leaves out fascism, sexism, racism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry. So while they aren't necessarily doing the bullshit routine themselves, they are basically as fine with it as the rest of them.

This isn't the same as just not having a CoC or not having a detailed CoC.

Instances that simply have no CoC or no detailed CoC against violent speech aren't automatically on this list because an instance can still act against violent speach without one. This list is only for instances whose administrators have systematically ignored or accepted instances of violent speech, or have made it clear that they would act in this way if that were to happen.

Instances that have made it clear that they won't remove violent individuals, but at least will silence them from their end (so they don't bother other instances) are also not on this list.

Someone on this instance was found posting hate speech, multiple people (including admins/moderators in mastodon.social and anticapitalist.party) saw it and talked to the admin of this instance (@wonderfall), who defended the person posting them. The offending user has since been deleted (don't know why), but @wonderfall has defended their original stance. I don't know if they have continued to this day.

The about page more recently has added some kind of policy for moderating hate speech and harassment, but the admins are still have a very hands-off policy and one I personally don't think is acceptable. You'll have to decide how that is for your own instance.

Bad/Ignorant Politics

The main premise of counter.social is a jingoist statement in response to investigations related to social media advertising being used by foreign states to attempt to influence the 2016 US General Election. This instance blocks entire countries' populations (ie. Russia, Iran, China, Ukraine etc.) based solely on their governments' (or part of their government, as is the case with Ukraine) relationships with the United States government. They block VPN exits too out of fear that those governments may use them for social media campaigns.

The basis for this instance is very generalising and applies an ugly (and ironically divisionary) worldview. It completely ignores the fact that people in a country can often have differing political opinions to that of the ruling political party, the idea of political dissidents and the idea that anyone can basically... influence anyone, like friends, neighbours, corporations, social media networks, political parties in your country, and basically anyone with the same passport (or not) as you.

This also doesn't tackle the supposed problem like they think it does at all (a government can just set up base in another country or pay people in other countries to do the work for them), and it screws over people in the west (like myself) who use VPNs to evade government and corporate surveillance in their own countries, which they seem to be just fine with.

All-round, it should be a joke because of how poorly thought out it is, but it isn't, and it's pretty shitty to begin with.

...but wait, there's more!

It also turns out that the admin has some anti-trans sentiment and insists on misgendering trans people (one example (screencapped above) I have been told by multiple sources there are other examples).

Unresponsive to moderation messages

Instances that haven't responded to moderation messages in my personal experience. (Take this with a pinch of salt.)

I sent a message to the instance's admin about the user pictured above. They did not respond for a week while being active at the time. Trying again also yielded no response. While this user appears to be deleted, another from the same person has arisen in it's place and I still didn't get any response from the admin about any of this.

Complacency with harassing users

Admin would not act based on a legitimate moderation request involving a user jumping in on a harassing post thread. I tried to explain to them why it was a shitty thing to do, but they were insistent on not doing anything.

social.homunyan.com (https://social.homunyan.com/users/ZettaiRyouiki/updates/4632, also that entire user. The admin has boosted an update from that user and the instance is very small so they seem fine with it.)

Corporate-owned or corporate-sponsored social instances

This may not become a serious issue, but I think it could be a really important thing to keep an eye on for the future. I think that corporate ownership generally conflicts with the idea of social spaces as an emotionally supportive environment (how many of us left Twitter because it tolerates Nazis and doesn't have any real ethical or moral positions?).

They also conflict with the idea of intermingling, spaces with a cooperative relationship to each other (ie. our instances) - corporations expect to dominate 'markets', we provide services based on what we can afford to those who want and need them. I would say that our kind of social networking is potentially an existential threat to corporate social networking, and we shouldn't let them have an inch because they will take a mile. If they ever take an interest in decentralised social networking, they will only care about us insofar that we're good PR for them.

I'm not necessarily saying block these right now (I'm not apart from Pawoo, for other reasons), but I think keeping watch would be a good idea, especially if they become a thing in the West. They currently only seem to be a thing in Japan right now.

Pawoo (pawoo.net, un-hyperlinked because it contains lolicon) (made and run by Pixiv Inc. [JP])

Advertising

Instances owned or used by corporations to advertise and post product updates. I wouldn't say block them, I just think they're better silenced so only people who want to see them will see them in the Federated Timeline.

Other instances have said that the user slides towards a pro-white supremacist stance [1][2] and their behaviour generally follows that profile. Not explicitly so (at least from their public toots) - but through the amount and kind of dogwhistles they toot (an example of a racist/racialist toot they boosted is screencapped below) and white supremacist-leaning individuals that they follow. It's not just guilt by association - they clearly endorse this shit themselves.